MELBOURNE – Chinese immigrant Mr. Chen Yong, now living in Melbourne, came forward to tell how he was asked by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to be an intelligence agent several years ago. His disclosure comes after former Chinese government workers Mr. Chen Yonglin and Hao Fengjun announced that the CCP maintains thousands of spies overseas.

Mr. Chen Yong said that in 1991 when he was working in a foreign trade department in China’s Dalian city, his company sent him and five other co-workers on a business trip to Thailand, Australia and Hong Kong. Several days before they left, a person from the Dalian municipal police department met with them, assigned them tasks and asking them to study police materials. He claimed he was from the State Security Bureau. During the meeting, he talked about foreign affairs and asked them to collect relevant information from the counties they were to visit. The police official requested any information that would be beneficial to the Communist Party and country, including any details about organizations or individuals they contacted. He said that these observations should be put in writing and reported to the police department immediately upon their return.

The police official emphasized that the Party was assigning them an honorable political task and that they should pay the highest attention to it. After being brainwashed by the police department, Chen Yong said that all five people promised to obey the Party’s instructions and, as their duty to their country, would do whatever the Party asked of them. During their business trip, they stayed in Thailand and Australia for ten days each and then went to Hong Kong before returning to China. After they returned to Dalian city, the delegation chief wrote a detailed report and submitted it to the State Security Bureau. The content of the report was unknown. Chen Yong said that the statement included a behavior report of each of the delegates. The Security Bureau used the report to gather information on its own citizens.

After Mr. Chen Yong immigrated to Melbourne, he became friends with a man who was also from Dalian city. The friend’s father worked in the Chinese military, and his mother was a mid-level official in the Dalian municipal police department. His friend warned him that both the Dalian municipal police department and the municipal security bureau had planted spies in Australia, and reminded him not to talk casually. On June 11, after attending the public rally supporting Chen Yonglin and Hao Fengjun, Mr. Chen Yong decided to support them by exposing the CCP’s crimes with his own experiences.

Mr. Chen Yong’s account depicts the great number of informal spies and intelligent workers the CCP manages around the world. According to Chen Yong, this is not a recent phenomenon.